'Alive' air crash survivors to help miners' families

Survivors of a 1972 plane crash featured in the movie Alive will travel to Chile to comfort the families of 33 trapped miners as a way of repaying the country for help in their rescue.

A Uruguayan rugby team, accompanied by family members and friends, was on its way to Chile for a friendly match when its plane struck a mountain. After 10 days, the survivors heard on their radio that rescuers had given them up for dead. They decided to dig up some of the bodies they had buried in the snow and eat them.

One of the survivors, Jose Luis Inciarte, said the Chilean miners' situation had struck a chord with crash survivors in Uruguay. "They'll be thinking that their only goal is to get out of there to hug their families because that's exactly what happened to us," he told Reuters.

The miners have been trapped deep underground for nearly a month after a cave-in and the rescue effort could take up to four months. "The visit is a way to... give something back in return for everything the Chileans did for us back in 1972," said Mr Inciarte.

Of the 45 people on the doomed flight, 16 survived 72 days on the mountain. They were rescued when two of the survivors struck out to find help and ran into a Chilean man on horseback.